“You sit with Bubbie, Wayne, my sweet little gentile.”
Bubbie smiled at me and patted my hand with her dry fingers. “You could be Jewish. Your profile suggests a tribal lineage.”
I didn’t know how to answer this or if it was a true compliment. I just smiled and let her pat my hand some more. I noticed she had three rings on one hand.
“Bubbie will tell you what is going to happen. The Torah will be passed from the grandfather to the father to the bar mitzvah, Dennis. This symbolizes the passing down of the obligation to study the Torah. Our Dennis will recite his portion, and he will ask for a blessing from the rabbi. When he gets this blessing, he will now be responsible for himself and for following the commandments. Do you understand?”
I nodded, which, of course, was all I could do. In fact, it was what Denny had told me to do.
Denny had told me that his mother would sit me next to Bubbie.
Just before the ceremony, I sent Denny a text.
Me: What should I do?
Denny: Just nod. I, Denny Rosenblatt, am her second-favorite topic in the world. So just let her talk about me.
Me: What is her first-favorite topic?
Denny: Anything about dietary fiber and her need for more.
“Denny is my sweet, sweet little mensch,” Bubbie said, still patting my hand. I figured we were on safe footing now that she’d brought up her second-favorite topic. I planned to do a lot of nodding to encourage her to stay on this topic. My knowledge of fiber was limited.
So I sat in the synagogue pews and watched Denny as he was surrounded by his grandfather and father and as the Torah scrolls, wrapped in blue velvet with golden trim, were passed from one man to the next. Denny’s face told the whole story. He was ready to receive them. There was a part of the ceremony where the congregation answered in unison, and I had no idea what it meant or what they said. I just focused on the story of Denny’s face, which was fixed in concentration as the Torah scrolls were unrolled on a table.
The rabbi took part of his shawl and touched the spot where Denny was to read. Denny took his own shawl, touched the spot on the parchment, and then kissed the edge of his shawl. He rolled the scrolls back together and they all prayed. When he placed a pointer on the scrolls, he began his Torah portion. The words came out of his mouth like a chant. Like he was almost singing. Bubbie leaned into my shoulder and wept. So I patted her hand.
I couldn’t believe how the entire synagogue was transfixed by Denny Rosenblatt, the bar mitzvah of the day, the guy who sang most of his sentences in real life and followed beautiful girls at the mall. His voice, normally such an annoyance to his mother because of his stuttering, became something altogether different. Chill bumps rose from the back of my neck. He rang out in song-talk so beautifully that you just knew he was born to sing.
Afterward, his mother and father and grandfather could not stop kissing him and patting him on the back. Denny had the biggest smile in the world. It was amazing to see the actual moment when Denny the boy became Denny the man.
I admit that I had a case of Jew envy. It’s possible I always will.
The whole weight of thousands of years of tradition between fathers and sons made me so happy for Denny.
“We’ll go to the party now, okay? You’ll have fun with Dennis, yes?” Bubbie asked.
We went to the party.
Three hours after he became a man, Denny Rosenblatt had a big party in a hotel ballroom. Giant platters of food, a DJ, all kinds of funny blinking-light sunglasses, and dancing. It was all great to me, but Denny just sat at a big round table, looking across the room.
What?
“Max Goldsticker is talking to Monica with his perfect voice.”
I lined up my sight to see who Denny was looking at. A pretty curly-haired girl with big, dark eyes. Monica.
Do you want to go over there?
“What would I say?” Denny asked. “I stammer on the name Monica.”
You could sing. That works.
Denny wasn’t budging. The whole room was supposed to be a party. A celebration for him. But he was miserable. I had an idea and didn’t know if I could pull it off. The only fact I had about my idea was that Denny really could sing.
My idea led me to the stage, where the band was about to start playing a new song. A Beatles song I’d written down on a piece of paper and handed to them. A song I’d heard Denny sing in his mom’s van a hundred times. One of the band members picked up the microphone and announced to the crowd that the next number was going to come from the guest of honor. Denny looked at the stage and at me. He shook his head, but I waved him up. If I could stand up there in front of a bunch of strangers with my beat-up face, I knew he could do this. And he would be impressive.
It was shouts from the crowd that finally got Denny up onstage. I made to head down the stairs, but Denny caught me by my arm before I could bolt.
“No way are you leaving,” he whispered. While Denny sang and the audience cheered, I stood in the background and watched him. Denny was as happy as I’d ever seen him. I spotted Monica in the crowd, and she was no longer talking to Max Goldsticker. She was singing along with Denny.
When it was over, Mrs. Rosenblatt hugged and kissed Denny. And Denny had a small group of people around him, too.
I sat at a table of Rosenblatts and they had twelve conversations going all at once and it was terrific. I pictured them all on the same plane, all on the same flight, just having one big party in the sky.
“Oh, Wayne, honey, look at your friend Dennis, isn’t he handsome tonight, I’m all verklempt,” Mrs. Rosenblatt said. “He has the voice of an angel, my Denny, doesn’t he? Wayne, honey, when is your birthday?”
I smiled at her.
Did you know that I was also about to turn thirteen?
Yep. If I had Hebrew blood, I was on the verge of being a man. I could stand out in the Flee’s front yard, and he could say, Here, son, have my collection of concert T-shirts.
“I’m going to make you a delicious sandwich for your birthday, Wayne,” Mrs. Rosenblatt said.
“Moooom, no one wants a sandwich for his birthdaaay!” Denny sang.
CHAPTER 24
Apparently, Denny Rosenblatt thought he knew what I needed for my birthday. Because three weeks later, when I turned thirteen, I went to his house and he chucked a big book at me. The Illustrated History and Mystery of the Titanic.
The Titanic?
Denny whisper-talked, “It’s a metaphor for your life, Wayne on a plane.”
My life is sinking into a watery grave?
“No, your life is about holding out hope. Lost things being found and all that. For your search. It’s still out there waiting to be found. See? Do you know how long it took for searchers to find the sunken Titanic?”
Over seventy years.
“Exactly! So you’ve only been searching for the flag a few months. You need to give yourself time. I was wrong about what I said before. You should keep looking.”
It was a nice thought. That Denny. He could not only sing, he could really surprise you with the connections he made in his brain. But the thing was, I didn’t really think I had a lot of time.
Grandpa was thinner. Sleepier. Another new amber pill bottle was on the counter. Facts were adding up. And I still hadn’t come right out and asked him what was up. I drew pictures of elephants and pinned them to the fridge. The computer’s screen saver was a giant elephant. I was hoping he would ask me, Hey, what’s up with all these elephants? And it would be a good place for me to respond, It’s about time we talk about all these elephants in the room, huh?
It hadn’t worked.
And Mom? She was a locked door. She was in a good mood when she was with Tim LeMoot. But when she was at home, alone and quiet, her mood seemed sad. She wore her deep-thinking face all the time. The face you have when you are trying to work out a really hard word problem.
Sandy? Well, the Titanic metaphor fit our relationship better than any other. Ou
r steady stream of back-and-forth texts had continued, if you could even call them texts. We were down to communicating only in emojis.
So the flag? I didn’t have seventy years. Though there was still no new news, I held out hope that a stranger would discover it. I imagined it in my head every night. Maybe if I imagined it enough, it would come true.
“Come on, let’s go walk around Sears,” Denny said.
We got to the mall, and Denny said now that we were thirteen, we should wear cologne.
“We’ll walk through Macy’s. Those fragrance women in white coats? Man, they spray everything that moves,” he whispered.
He was right about that. We walked right into the cologne gauntlet. At least three white-coated women with press-on smiles were armed with cologne bottles and ready to shoot.
I got one cologne attack. Denny got three. As I walked behind him into the mall, the wake of smells that trailed him was toxic. But he thought he smelled like a man. There was no arguing with him about that.
“Girls love cologne,” Denny whispered.
When you don’t have a properly working voice, you let a lot of things go. Like the effectiveness of too much cologne. So I shook it off, and then he said we should make up a story to go along with my look.
I don’t have a look.
“You might have been in a motorcycle accident, you know? Or you are a young movie stuntman on hiatus. You’re here to get a jacket, right?” Denny whispered. “Let’s go to Leather Town. I’ve always wanted to go in there.”
True. Mom had told me to buy a new jacket since I’d outgrown my old one.
You know how something leathery and new smells extra-leathery? That’s what the jacket I found smelled like. Soft as butter, too. I didn’t look half bad when I turned to the mirror and checked out my right-side profile. Man, I wouldn’t be half bad if I could go through life walking sideways.
I wrote to Denny: Cool.
After our trip to the mall, you will never guess what was waiting for me when I got home!
“Surprise,” Mom shouted. “Happy birthday!”
Mom had pulled every chair we owned around our kitchen table.
And Sandy Showalter was seated in one of them.
Sandy Showalter in my house! There were other people, too, but it was like they were in black and white and she was in full color. I would like to tell you that this fact made me super happy. And it would have if Sandy hadn’t been sitting in a green-and-white lawn chair. Her mother sat in a lawn chair, too. The Flee, Stephanie, and Carrot sat in our regular chairs. Grandpa was in the swiveling office chair. Mrs. Rosenblatt sat in the tiny antique chair Mom kept in her bedroom. Because we didn’t have enough regular chairs. I tried not to focus on that fact. Mismatched chairs should not make a person feel embarrassed, but they did.
“Wayne, you and Denny sit right here,” Mom said.
We sat on two stools. I don’t even know where they came from.
Stupid chairs.
Did you know that there are several recorded cases of spontaneous human combustion? The common denominator, however, is that most of these people drank alcohol to excess prior to their combustion. The best I could’ve hoped for in my fantasy combustion was that I’d been spritzed with cologne to excess.
Because cologne is also highly flammable.
“Happy birthday, Wayne,” Sandy said with a smile. A real, in-person smile, not an emoji smile! “I like your jacket.”
So I didn’t go up in flames, unless you counted the hot rash that crept up from my stomach to my neck.
Denny sang, “There will be caaaaakkkkke!”
Our stools were right on the corner of the table. No easy exit. And believe me, since the crash, I pay attention to the exits in a whole new way.
Mom put a supersized bowl of ice cream in front of me, while everyone else gobbled up delicious-looking, torturous pizza. Even Grandpa. Everyone was talking and smiling, even Sandy. I realized that Mom was happy. Her hair up in a ponytail. Her new eyebrow debuting.
“Tim is coming over later, Wayne,” she said, smiling. “He has something for you, too.”
“What? Probably a pair of boots, right?” the Flee said.
I saw Mom mouth the word behave to him. I hoped he would, but my stomach did flip-flops. Maybe the worst thing he would do was tell me to join the stupid Aqua-Duck team in front of everyone.
“I would never miss my son’s birthday,” he said. Carrot and Stephanie had ice cream.
“Daddy got you money,” Carrot blurted out.
“Carrot, son, you shouldn’t spoil it,” the Flee said.
Denny sang-talked. Mrs. Rosenblatt rambled on about Denny’s bar mitzvah and how the printer had messed up the spelling of his name on the thank-you cards and called him Danny. Even old Hank Williams, whose tank was in the room, took a slow swim around his habitat. And it wasn’t awkward silence with Sandy.
“Everyone misses you at school,” Sandy said.
I wrote her a note: Thanks!
Grandpa handed my dad a piece of cake.
“Well, age thirteen, huh,” Grandpa said. “That’s a great age. When Reed was thirteen, do you remember, Jennifer, he was already working his way up to be an Eagle Scout. He organized an event to help the local animal shelter and did it all himself. That boy already knew how to serve his community and his country.”
Grandpa entered the patriotic zone. That wasn’t so bad. He was most like himself when he did that. Not sad or distracted. I hoped the conversation about Reed wouldn’t get him all worked up.
I looked at Denny and envied him all over again. His dinner table was always loud, but there wasn’t any sadness. And bonus fact: All his dining room chairs matched. So I prayed hard that everyone would stay happy. Just one hour of solid happiness. Just one hour where it could be all about me. Maybe that sounds selfish, but that was what I wanted. Eat cake. Be happy. Receive presents.
Mom put a box in front of me. A new laptop computer. Finally! Mrs. Rosenblatt gave me an engraved silver money clip with my initials. W.H.K.
And Grandpa? He presented me with a new fishing pole. Man, the whole party was almost nice.
And it was all going well. Until Grandpa asked the Flee a question.
“So, Doug, where do your people come from again?” Grandpa asked.
“My people?” the Flee said. “You make it sound like I’m from another planet or something.” He laughed and it made Mrs. Rosenblatt laugh, too.
“Your people. Any of them serve?” Grandpa continued.
“Now, Stephanie, this is the thing I told you about,” the Flee said. “It was always about the army in this family. Who served. Who fought the longest.”
“What’s wrong with the army?” Grandpa asked.
“It’s fine. It’s just not for everyone. And you already know the answer to your question. None of my people served.” He put the word people in air quotes.
It was possible, I thought, that the Flee felt like me sometimes. Like he didn’t fit in. Like he was the odd lawn chair around a table of matching chairs. I took a bite of ice cream and looked at Denny. He gave me a nod and a smile.
“Does anyone want any more cake?” Mom offered.
“I guess some families get to sit back and stay at home while their liberties are being protected by others,” Grandpa said. “Wayne, you understand that, right? When you enlist, you’ll see how exceptional it is to serve.”
“What if Wayne doesn’t want to enlist?” the Flee said.
There it was again. A play called Tug-of-War. Wayne Kovok playing the role of the rope. Stretching. Pulling. I prayed Grandpa would drop the subject. Embrace his own rule about knowing when it’s your bull. This wasn’t his bull. But that didn’t stop him from waving a bright red cape and trying to agitate my dad for sport.
In front of everyone.
“It’s less about choosing to enlist and more of a calling,” Grandpa said. “Wayne will make the right decision.”
Wait, what? What is the right decision?
And why was this conversation taking place around the table? On my birthday?
Mom said, “Dad, you want some more ice cream?” Maybe she thought if people were stuffing themselves with ice cream, they couldn’t talk. It was a good strategy.
“I don’t know, Jennifer,” the Flee said. “Do you have red, white, and blue flavor?” He tried to make a joke. Is it still a joke if no one laughs?
Grandpa ignored Mom. “You’re good at running, though.”
The Flee puffed up. “Well, I got a college scholarship for running track. Some people say I had a real talent for running.”
“Well, don’t break your arm patting yourself on the back,” Grandpa said, which I thought was a little funny.
“Funny,” the Flee said. “I was a champion runner.”
“Ha! Running away, maybe,” Grandpa said.
I stared into my bowl of ice cream. Did you know that the biggest ice-cream sundae ever created weighed twenty-four tons?
“Listen, I was teaching Wayne valuable life lessons. Endurance and such.”
The most popular flavor of ice cream is vanilla.
“Okay, since I know the old man isn’t going to drop it, what I did was take Wayne out to this road. To train him,” the Flee said to everyone.
Ice-cream cones were invented in 1904 at the World’s Fair in St. Louis.
“Doug, no one wants to hear about that,” Mom said.
In my mind, I covered everyone with the twenty-four-ton ice-cream sundae. Except Sandy and Denny and Mom. I let them sit on imaginary ice-cream cones.
Grandpa interrupted. “You know what, Doug?”
“What?” the Flee asked.
“You’re all beans and no broth!”
I stirred my ice cream until it was like soup.
“Doug! Dad! Let’s change the subject,” Mom said.
“Well, it’s true!” Grandpa said.
If you thought that would make me want to shout at the top of my lungs, you’d be correct. And inside, I was. I was shouting. Thousands of shouts, pounding against the inside of my brain. I was desperate to shout. To shout, but my beat-up throat would not cooperate. My voice had progressed to a raspy whisper in Dr. P’s office. Fact: A raspy whisper will not get anyone’s attention.
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